After retiring from competition in 1981, I did exhibitions and coached.
When our career is over, when we retire and the basketball stops bouncing, we still have to find something else to do.
Towards the end of my career, I was thinking about going into the media world. It's crucial: with three to four years left in the game, you begin to plan for the end.
Everybody asks me, 'Lee when did you know it was time to retire?' I said, 'when they quit asking me to coach.' After the Orlando Renegades, not many people were busting down my doors to coach, so why not do something else.
If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life, and there's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life.
I don't want to think of life after competing. But if I were to do anything else I'd go down the psychology route. That's what interests me.
I would be a pastor. It is something I think about doing when my playing days are over.
My athleticism will go away some day. I'm gonna be old one of these days, so I'm going to be able to use those post moves.
Well, my last year was 04-05 with the Heat, and I relaxed for a few years, and I said, 'Well, what am I going to do?' I've got to do my passion, and my passion is basketball.
You've got to respect your body and know the time to transition to what's next. A lot of athletes cannot transition. They don't have nothing to do after.
Over the years, when I've seen players retire, when you ask them about it, they always say you'll know when you're ready, and I think I know when I'm ready. I think I'm ready.
Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could play in the NFL because I had a knack for the game. But I can't play this game forever. When I'm finished, maybe I'll become a motivational speaker, maybe a preacher. But children need to know that life may be hard, but you can always overcome.
But I'll tell you this: When I lose my athleticism, it's time to go.
I had never made any plans beyond basketball.
After high school, I earned a scholarship to play Division I soccer at a small school in North Carolina, but I didn't get much playing time, which forced me to determine who I was beyond the field, something I had previously never had to do.
Had I been a great athlete, I'm not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.
It eventually ends, and that's what I think a lot of athletes forget. It's 10 years after the Olympics, and you won the Olympics, and that's great, but no one cares.
When I'm done with football, I want to be done with football. I don't want to have, Oh, did I leave too early?
Often there are players who have only football as a way of expressing themselves and never develop other interests. And when they no longer play football, they no longer do anything; they no longer exist, or rather they have the sensation of no longer existing.
I think it's very important that you don't start thinking about your life after football when you are 33 or 34. There are many more amazing things in this world, and it's important to think about these things before you retire.
Retiring was hard. I'd spent 15 years doing something I loved, but when you get older everything seems to go. When I started spending too long with the physio and the doctor, I knew it was time to call it a day. But I had no preparation for being retired and I didn't know what to do.
My legacy isn't about what I did playing football, but how I use the opportunities that came from playing football.
My dreams do not end with playing Major League Baseball.
I have met a lot of athletes who were on the top of their sport, and then sat around and did nothing. They just didn't know what to do.
I want to continue to do is to help these young women be successful. .. You don't just say goodbye at the end of their playing careers and end it there.
